Eurogamer.net talks with XCOM: Enemy Unknown producer Jake Solomon and original X-COM designer Julian Gollop about how the new installment in the series lives up to its forebears. "I think Firaxis has done a great job," Julian Gollop told them. "The game is addictive and absorbing, not to mention quite challenging on the classic difficulty setting."

Creston wrote on Nov 28, 2012, 10:39:It's just too bad that the challenge comes from the AI cheating and purely random shit happening to you that you can't do anything about. It's not a difficulty where the AI simply plays smarter than you do; it just cheats instead.Creston

I honestly don't understand this complaint about this or any other game. I'm not saying it's invalid. But basically, an enemy that has 30% chance to crit on normal has a 40% chance to crit on classic. Is this "cheating?" Why are the enemy statistics on one difficult level considered "fair" and on another "cheating?" The game is asymmetric, it's not like their sectoids are better than your sectoids. I'm happy to entertain a fuller explanation of this complaint, but for now I guess I just don't get it.

I've been playing games a long time. I've gotten over the fact that game AI will never scale infinitely, and instead strategy games will challenge me by presenting opponents that are stronger instead of more intelligent. Certainly this has been the case in every strategy game I've ever played on a computer, except maybe Chess. Again, are there games I'm missing with smarter and smarter AI to challenge the best players?

My personal criticism of the game is that it needs much more operational pressure in the mid and late game. The first couple months of classic feel about right, but after you get a decent income, and eventually full satellite coverage, the aliens never really do anything to break your momentum. The tactical game similarly becomes trivial once you have mid level soldiers and gear. If I survive the first month, I generally finish the game with maybe 1-2 more casualties total.